NorthStarNerd.Org

I Yam what I am!

The Minnesota DNR has delayed the Fishing Opener, thus you have NO excuse not to attend Minnebar! 

Seriously, if you are in Minnesota (geek or not), attend the best (free) technical conference in Minnesota. Over 600 individuals will be at Best Buy's headquarters on Saturday, May 7th. Register quickly because this event always fills up very fast. 

If you are familiar with barcamps, these events are "unconferences". Any topic is allowed, but the focus is normally technical. The ability to learn about what is driving technology throughout the world is unparalleled. You also get free pizza, beer and a t-shirt! 

I plan to both attend and present. One day's investment in your knowledge will have a great return. 

For those of you who don't live in Minnesota, and are not enjoying our late Winter, plus the ability at attend minnebar ... barcamps are hosted around the world. We are lucky in Minnesota that our barcamp is normally one of the largest anywhere. 

My session description: From skunkworks project to integrated production application. Learn how a a Fortune 100 company grew a 3 person private cloud microblogging network to a 5,000 person technical community which is integrated with Sharepoint and the Corporate Intranet. Expect a live demo. You've heard about Facebook for the Enterprise. See it in action with a business focus. 

Participants are most welcome to show their own corporate social networks. Bring your laptop! Sign up to attend my session.

The Headless Woodpecker!

It's important to understand and appreciate "the other guy's" technnical acumen. How often have you thought ... I can do that! Working in the software field for years, it's sometime too easy to not grant enough credit to what your peers or competitors have accomplished!

On to the "Headless Downey Woodpecker" story, and you'll understand what I am talking about. Ever since I was a little boy I have enjoyed watching birds, and can name more birds by sight or sound than most people, other than true "birders". For my birthday a few weeks ago, my wife less me pick out my own gift. I chose a Canon SX30 Powershot Camera. This camera edges me into the world of advanced phtography. While not a digital SLR camera, it's close. 

Thus, I decided to become John James Audubon. Two weeks ago I started hiking through the leftover snow in the northwoods. My goal was to take some wildlife photography of birds. After chasing many birds through the woods, my only photo was of the dreaded headless downy woodpecker (see below ... click to expand).

My realization ... there is a good reason wildlife photographers spend hours building blinds, and then wait days if not weeks for the local residents (birds and animals) to grow accustomed to the new part of the landscape. The idea ... let the animals and birds come to you ... have the camera set up and waiting. After all, birds move fast through a 360 degree spectrum.

I now have a good bird feeding station outside (deer proof!), and I'm starting to get better photos. Enjoy some new efforts which include two decent photos of Blue Jays, but also include the Headless Junco and Tailless Tree Sparrow. Craig Blacklock has nothing to fear from me at this time! He is a well know nature photographer in the Lake Superior region, and I now have a much greater appreciation for his work!

Click upon any image to view full sized!

First the headless Junco and tailless Tree Sparrow ...

And my Blue Jays during a light snow shower!

  

Data Visualizations

I love data visualizations. However, that fact is obvious to my long time readers who remember my being interviewed by the NY Times about ManyEyes. Since that interview back in the Summer of 2008, I've continued to work and do research with data visualization. You may ask why the subject of visual data is exciting? Quite simply, done properly the visualization can help one better understand what may appear as disparate data. However, done poorly, it can be misleading (how many of you remember Ross Perot's run for president? Charts and Percentages!)

Here are some data visualization sites and services which I particularly enjoy. First two blogs:

• Flowing Data (if a new visualization is out there, Nathan Yau will find it!)
  and
• Patrick Cain's Map Blog (a journalist who creates data visualization maps) 

As a fyi, I learned of these two blogs via Google's new online journal, Think Quarterly. Google's online journal also reminds me to call out Google's great online tool named Ngram Viewer. You can read a Google blog post from last Christmas on their relatively new service, or just accept my explanation that Ngram is a great tool for comparing how key words (and thus ideas, and philosophies) have appeared in books since the year 1800.  Are some ideas becoming more common in literature, or is the opposite true? It can be fun exploring via nGram. Remember if you decide to run some Google Ngram data visualizations, words and your thus your results ARE case sensitive.

Click any of the images shown below to view some of my own nGRam research. In closing, visual data is fun!

nGram Google Charts

Sex vs. Religion
This Ngram intrigues me. Is there a relation with the fall of organized religion and our societies fixation with sex? 

 

England vs. United States vs. China
I call this Ngram the fall the English empire, but will the United States be next? 

 

Plato
Kind of makes you wonder what causes the peaks and valleys of Plato and the discussion of certain philosophies! 

 

The Crack of the Bat! Fieldf/x

Batter up! A new baseball season has begun; and like any good techno blog, let's take a look at some newer technology now combined with America's favorite pasttime, baseball! Let me introduce you to Fieldf/x. However, I warn you, if you don't like data, you'll hate Fieldf/x from Sportvision.

Imagine object recognition system software which interacts with multiple cameras placed around a baseball diamond. The cameras in conjunction with the software record each players movement, and the ball as it leaves the bat (i.e. via a hit). This information is then fed into a database which then can over time determine the probablity that a given player will make a given play. Pretty cool!

Some of the data recorded includes: a fielder’s reaction time, his path the ball, the baserunner’s speed, or the arc of a fly ball.

Learn more via this web link! Here are some excellant images from Business Week which show some of the data and analysis in action.

Play ball!